<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>hey, you (don't you think it's kind of cute?) by raedear</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27289276">hey, you (don't you think it's kind of cute?)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedear/pseuds/raedear'>raedear</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, First Meetings, Kinda, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mistaken Identity, truly gratuitous flirting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:47:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,407</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27289276</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedear/pseuds/raedear</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Joe finally turns to the right, shaking the rain from his hair purely to annoy Andy, when he immediately freezes. Staring back at him with a look of benevolent confusion is most definitely not Andromache. Not unless Andy has made some drastic and quite frankly miraculous changes very, very quickly to her appearance. Joe gapes at the stranger, watching in quiet horror as he raises a hand to wipe a stray drop of water from his cheek, where all Joe’s flapping had tossed it.</i>
</p>
<p>In Joe's defence, the weather was really horrendous that day.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>794</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>hey, you (don't you think it's kind of cute?)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My first foray into The Old Guard fic! I saw <a href="https://three--rings.tumblr.com/post/632662427121664000/camillamacaulayy-grinchtaire">this</a>list of unusual prompts and lost my mind a little.</p>
<p>Thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewalrus_said/pseuds/thewalrus_said">Tess</a> for all their cheerleading and for beta-ing for me c:</p>
<p>I hope you have fun!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even as he ducks through the door of the car Joe thinks it’s a little weird that Andy is listening to 80s Italian pop, but he’s so busy being performatively pissed off that it doesn’t occur to him to ask about it. Between the rain that’s falling so hard it’s like the world’s trying to erase itself and the howling gale that’s helping it along, Joe thinks he can be forgiven a little distraction, frankly, and it doesn’t help that his bag sticks on the doorframe as he tries to get through, leading to him kicking it into the footwell of the front seat with a little more vigour than he normally would. </p>
<p>‘Really, Andromache,’ he snaps as he slams the door shut behind himself, eyes focussed on where his bag is awkwardly sticking up right where his knee needs to go. More kicking is required, clearly. ‘Couldn’t you have waited till his birthday to give Booker that first edition? Two hours he spent telling me every detail of its bindings, even what kind of glue was used—’ He breaks off momentarily to fumble with the seatbelt, cursing it under his breath. It sticks as he tugs on it, and he glares viciously at the mechanism as he reluctantly releases it. It takes all the drama of a gesture away if you have to pause to let a device work. When it relaxes, Joe clicks it into place with a barely satisfactory <em> clunk </em>and resumes his rant as he fumbles his way out of his soaked hoodie. ‘Rabbit skin glue—can you believe it? <em> Disgusting, </em> Andy. Disgusting. <em> And </em> he spent the hour after that telling me about the Real Madrid game—even though he <em> knew </em> I was going home to watch it, the drunken bastard spoiled the entire thing for me. I hope Celine poisons his dinner, frankly. It’ll save me-’ </p>
<p>Joe finally turns to the right, shaking the rain from his hair purely to annoy Andy, when he immediately freezes. Staring back at him with a look of benevolent confusion is most definitely not Andromache. Not unless Andy has made some drastic and quite frankly miraculous changes very, very quickly to her appearance. Joe gapes at the stranger, watching in quiet horror as he raises a hand to wipe a stray drop of water from his cheek, where all Joe’s flapping had tossed it.</p>
<p>‘Save you what?’ he asks, looking expectantly back at Joe. In the ensuing silence, the woman singing on the radio tells them in no uncertain terms that she’s not a lady, but one for whom the war never ends. For a brief moment, Joe wonders if he’s losing his mind.</p>
<p>‘Doing it myself,’ continues Joe weakly, eyes flicking helplessly between the stranger’s sea-grey eyes, the proud hook of his nose, the broad stretch of his knuckles where his hands are wrapped easily around the steering wheel. His smile is the barest lifting of the corner of his lip, and Joe is fascinated by it. </p>
<p>‘I see. To all their just rewards. I hope Booker is truly deserving of his fate.’ </p>
<p>A muscle in Joe’s cheek twitches at the way the other man’s accent curls around his vowels; English sits strangely in his mouth, perfect in form but clearly unwelcome. </p>
<p>‘He is— Who are you?’ Joe interrupts himself, unable to hold his confusion in any longer. The stranger continues to smile patiently at him, his eyes unfairly large and lovely. Even the deep and dark shadows below them only serve to make their curious colour more interesting. Joe still isn’t certain what shade to call them.</p>
<p>‘Nicolo,’ he says, lifting a hand from the wheel and offering it to Joe to shake. He does. Nicolo’s hands are strong, clearly, but his handshake is gentle. A greeting, not a competition. He makes an odd movement in his shoulders, as though he intended to lean forward but stopped himself. Joe wonders if he meant to kiss his cheeks. He doesn’t think he would have minded that so much. ‘You can call me Nicky, provided you also tell me your name, and why you’re in my car.’ </p>
<p>‘Your—?’ Joe glances around, and has to wonder at himself. He’s never seen this car before in his life. It looks nothing like Andromache’s at all. A brief glance through the windscreen shows it’s roughly the same colour, but other than that, nothing. A set of rosary beads hang from the rearview mirror. That alone should have clued him in.  ‘I’m…’ He pauses again, looking back at Nicky with helpless confusion. He realises he’s still holding Nicky’s hand, but doesn’t let go. It’s not like he can really be much weirder, and the contact is comforting. ‘I’m Joe. I have no idea why I’m in your car. I was aiming for someone else’s.’</p>
<p>Nicky’s smile grows to a slightly lopsided grin. Despite the audible rain on the roof, Joe feels like the sun has come out. Nodding his head towards the windscreen again, Nicky speaks through his smile, his eyes crinkling with the breadth of it. </p>
<p>‘Could it be you were aiming for that car? The woman in it has been laughing at us for some time.’ </p>
<p>When Joe drags his eyes away from Nicky’s, he’s unsurprised to see Andromache laughing herself sick in the car directly in front of them. She and Nicky are parked nose-to-nose, the short bonnet of her car putting her barely two metres from them. Her car is the same sleek shade of silver as Nicky’s, but a completely different make and model. When she notices him looking, she gives him a shaky thumbs up, barely able to lift her arms for the force of her laughter. Joe sighs and turns back to Nicky. </p>
<p>‘I can’t even <em> begin </em> to apologise,’ says Joe, finally letting go of Nicky’s hand. Nicky squeezes his fingers as he does. </p>
<p>‘Then don’t,’ interrupts Nicky gently. His smile has settled down again to the tiny quirk of his lip. ‘You have nothing to apologise for; it was an accident.’</p>
<p>‘Still,’ begins Joe, unsure himself where he intends to take that sentence, even as he continues speaking. ‘You must’ve been surprised—did I scare you? I really am sorry.’ </p>
<p>Nicky tilts his head, glancing away from Joe for just a second. Joe misses his eyes on him immediately, wildly wonders what he needs to do to catch Nicky’s attention again, but Nicky beats him to any plan by catching his gaze again before he speaks. </p>
<p>‘Not scared,’ he says simply, smiling still. ‘Confused, yes, but not scared. Hard to be scared of a man with charcoal on his hands, and chalk in his beard.’ </p>
<p>Joe raises his hand to his face immediately, glancing at the little mirror in the pulled-down sun visor in front of him. There’s an almost-complete white handprint along his right cheek, dusty but distinct in his thick beard. When he looks down at his hands, he can see the charcoal he had failed to clean off properly after drawing on the plane. He feels like a caught child when he looks back at Nicky, who’s still smiling that enigmatic smile at him, but has relaxed enough that he’s resting his head on his hands on the top of the steering wheel. Joe wonders what he does that leaves him so tired in the middle of the day, but still lets him smile like that at disruptive strangers. </p>
<p>‘May I see what you were drawing?’ Nicky asks. Joe searches his eyes for guile or mockery, but his face is open and without expectation. Joe can tell that he could say no and Nicky wouldn’t push. He finds he doesn’t want to say no, even though all he has to show for the past day’s work is loose sketches. He dutifully digs through his bag anyway, carefully not glancing through the windscreen again. If Andy’s in a hurry, she’ll make herself known. He hesitates when he pulls out his sketchbook, but Nicky stays silent, watching him. The lack of pressure alone is what makes Joe move, and he hands his sketchbook off to Nicky without dwelling on it any further. Nicky takes it carefully, holding it by the edges and sitting up properly to take it in. </p>
<p>The sketchbook is fairly new—only the first dozen or so pages have been used—but Nicky gives each page a thorough evaluation, exclaiming in quiet murmured Italian how impressed he is, how lovely the art, how creative Joe’s use of light and dark, chalk and charcoal. Joe wonders if Nicky knows he can understand him, and doubts it very much when Nicky says ‘<em>as lovely as your art is, your eyes are lovelier still’ </em> in exactly the same tone as he said <em> ‘what a pretty cat, you’ve caught the light on her fur so well’</em>. </p>
<p>‘Beautiful, Joe, truly,’ says Nicky, back in his accented English as he hands Joe’s sketchbook back to him.</p>
<p>Grinning broadly, Joe takes it from him, running his fingers down Nicky’s hand as he does. </p>
<p>‘<em>Grazie mille Nicky, sono felice che ti sia piaciuto.'  </em></p>
<p>Nicky’s already large eyes grow wider at Joe’s confident Italian, and a sweet pink colour sneaks into his cheeks and across his nose. </p>
<p>‘Ah - you?’ For the first time since Joe found himself in his car, Nicky looks thrown. Not terribly so, but it’s there in the size of his eyes, the hesitance in his voice. </p>
<p>‘<em>Sì, molto bene</em>.’ </p>
<p>Nicky nods, almost to himself the movement is so small, before he smiles again, glancing downwards as he blushes. He continues in Italian, and Joe delights in how the language fits his mouth so much better than English. </p>
<p>‘I apologise if I made you uncomfortable, but I meant what I said.’ Nicky glances up through his eyelashes as he speaks, and Joe feels like being hit by a car might be less impactful than that look. He feels a strange need to check his chest for bruises. ‘You truly do have eyes at least as beautiful as your wonderful art.’</p>
<p>It’s Joe’s turn to blush, and he rubs the back of his neck as he grins helplessly at the dashboard, unable to look Nicky in the eye while he says such lovely things. He can feel the depth of the dimple in his cheek, and when he chances a glance he can see Nicky staring at it, smiling himself. </p>
<p>‘You’re one to talk about beautiful eyes,’ he says at last, looking back at Nicky properly. ‘I almost forgot how to speak when I first saw you. If I had all the time in the world I still wouldn’t be able to perfect the colour in paint.’</p>
<p>They grin dopily at each other, until the bright burst of a car horn sends them both jumping in their seats, both of them flinching away from each other instinctively. Joe hadn’t even noticed how close they had gotten until Nicky was suddenly on the other side of the car again. Joe glares through the windscreen at Andy, but finds her looking somewhere beyond him, outside of Nicky’s car. He can still hear the horn ringing in his ears but given the way Andy’s gesticulating in an almost military-fashion at someone he can’t see, he guesses she didn’t mean it as a warning to him. He’s not even all that surprised; in all the years he’s known her, he’s rarely managed to go somewhere with Andy without her bumping into someone else she knows. That it happened again in an airport carpark is nothing unusual. </p>
<p>Sighing, he puts his hand on the door handle anyway, preparing himself physically, if not emotionally, to leave. </p>
<p>‘I should get out of your hair,’ he says, struggling to decide if he wants to memorise the shape of Nicky’s eyes more or the exact distance between the beauty mark on his cheek and the curve of his upper lip. ‘You must be waiting for someone if you’re sitting here; I don’t want to get in their way too.’ </p>
<p>He’s already starting to open the door as Nicky opens his mouth to speak, and both of them jump again as someone slams it shut from the outside. Joe whips around, reaching behind himself as he does to push Nicky out of the way, when his eyes finally focus on a beautiful East Asian woman who’s looking through the window and also visibly laughing. Nicky makes an indignant and incredibly Italian sound from behind him, and as Joe watches the woman laughs harder, sticks her tongue out at Nicky, and makes her way around the bonnet of the car to climb in beside Andy. Joe’s never seen her in his life and would put all his money on her being just as new to Andy, but they greet each other like old friends before Andy gives him a lazy salute through the windscreen and starts to drive away. </p>
<p>The radio has long since moved on and a new voice begs them to tell him what the point is. He and Nicky blink together as they watch their friends drive away.</p>
<p>‘This would be very awkward if you hadn’t flirted with me first,’ says Joe, because he’s nothing if not painfully honest. Nicky nods beside him silently, before he laughs with a charming snort and drops his head back to the steering wheel. </p>
<p>‘It would be more awkward if you hadn’t flirted back,’ he says, laughter still in his throat. Joe grins at him.</p>
<p>‘I know I must smell like an aeroplane, and my hair is definitely drying funny as we speak, but are you busy now?’ </p>
<p>Of the few of Nicky’s smiles that Joe’s seen so far, the tiny quirk of his lip is his favourite. </p>
<p>‘My obligations just drove away with your lift home,’ he says, sitting up straight again and reaching for the keys. ‘What did you have in mind?’ </p>
<p>‘Dinner? Conversation somewhere other than your car? Possibly you giving me your number and then maybe a kiss? I have a lot of options for you,’ says Joe, as charmingly as he possibly can. From the look in Nicky’s eyes, it’s very charming indeed. </p>
<p>‘All very good options,’ says Nicky as he puts his hand on Joe’s seat for balance and looks over his own shoulder to reverse. Joe nudges his finger with his nose, because he can. Nicky’s smile widens but he keeps his eyes on the road. ‘Let’s start with dinner.’</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Five cars down the way:</p>
<p>Booker, in his wife's car, steaming: I might be in trouble. I feel a disturbance in my waters.<br/>His wife: you're definitely in trouble, don't puke in my car</p>
<p>Please excuse the Italian if it's completely wrong, google translate did its best. It <i>should</i> say, 'thank you very much Nicky, I'm glad you think so.' but knowing my luck it says something completely nonsensical. If this is the case, please don't hesitate to let me know. </p>
<p>That's it! Hope you had fun! Please drop a kudos or a comment if you have the spoons c: </p>
<p>Catch me on <a href="https://twitter.com/raedear_writes">twitter</a> or <a href="https://raedear.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> if you want to scream with me about Joe and Nicky and their beautiful faces.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>